Why Sales Team Outsourcing is the Best Way to Reach New International Markets

You live in a globalized world and you want your business to reflect that. You offer a solution that benefits a lot of people locally, but you know it can do more. You have a vision and an international sales strategy and you’re ready to grab those business opportunities and make them yours!

But how can you accomplish that? You have a successful sales team back home, but no one seems enthusiastic about moving abroad. They don’t speak the language or know local customs — it’d be a steep learning curve anyway. And honestly having to travel over to deal with local recruiters and real estate agents seems like a lot of hassle — and a huge gamble. There’s got to be an easier way than having to set up another headquarters, this time in a foreign land.

Sales team outsourcing is probably right for you. Here are seven reasons why.

Local, Experienced, and Ready to Go.

If you need B2B lead generation in a foreign country, then hiring a local sales outsourcing firm that knows the market and audience is the fastest and most-cost efficient path to success. By using a more experienced and local third party, you get the highest qualified “boots on the ground” in the new territory, and now have a team with their own local network that is already immersed in local language and customs. They know who to talk to and can easily learn what challenges you are trying to solve.

Minimize costs associated with recruiting, hiring, and training.

If you are moving sales staff abroad, you’re going to have to offer some extra incentives, as well as adhere to local laws for vacations, maternity-paternity leave, and more. If you are looking to hire locally, you need a recruiter who then will negotiate at least a one-year contract on behalf of their candidate. And let’s not even get started about real estate shopping and contracts and all those infrastructure costs. Sales team outsourcing gives you all the benefits of a local employee without lengthy contracts — which tend to be much more binding and arduous in places like Europe. In fact, an outsourced sales team will like accomplish more work with better results without the costs and headaches associated with relocating employees or hiring in the new market. B2B sales outsourcing is all about reaping the benefits without the long-term financial and legal risks.

One new business development director in the new location can’t do it all.

Again, this would be a long drawn out headhunting process, but you can’t just have one business development manager setting up shop in your new country if you want to test and expand quickly. Further, you have to stop looking at continents as countries. For example, when many companies want to expand from the U.S. to Europe then generally make a few hires in the U.K. and hope that they quickly expand across the continent. In reality, each country and often subsets of countries are their own markets. Scaling across Europe is much easier when you hire a sales outsourcing firm like Sales Force Europe that hand-picks seasoned technology sales reps that are already selling successfully  in your target locations. By customizing each sales team for your needs, you can tap into the precise channels with customer relationships already built. So while one director can’t manage it all, you can have one company taking care of contracts, customs and norms as it takes you into an array of new markets.

And don’t forget, the United States is as big as a continent, so don’t think one relocated European business development director can compete with locals in key cities and states. That’s why Full Funnel helps bring foreign businesses to the U.S. with local sellers and experienced marketers.

Sales outsourcing is a highly scalable.

There’s no doubt we are in the Age of the Gig Economy. Business process outsourcing (BPO) is key to your taking your tech company into an international enterprise. Most likely, if you’ve found this post, you have established revenue and a small group of core team members. Outsourcing lets you keep your team small, maintaining important company culture, while still handling a larger client base. Most outsourcing firms can easily scale up and add new team members to meet increased demand or strive for even loftier growth goals, and do so at a fraction of the time and cost it would take you to hire and train new team members.

Sales outsourcing means you hit those small, but fruitful niches, verticals, and territories.

Sales Force Europe founder Rick Pizzoli put it this way, “Sales outsourcing in Europe benefits the dynamics — the small countries, the verticals within those places, the localization of the strategy and the content with the outsource model.” Buy local, sell local. The smaller the economy, the more interesting it is to support local business or at least fellow residents. With part-time contracted sales reps, you can deep-dive locally, but you can also test out different verticals without investing excessively. Who knows, those niches may turn out to be your new main revenue stream!

The most qualified sales reps don’t want to be tied down to one unproven product in the market.

When folks are skilled at sales, they don’t want to sell an unproven product in a new market. Trying to hire an in-house sales rep in a new country, you’ll be challenged by convincing them to sell your product in an unproven market, especially if the majority of their compensation is commission-based. Highly skilled sales reps simply wouldn’t take that risk. Sales team outsourcing will allow you to get access to highly skilled, motivated, and experienced sales reps.

Sales outsourcing comes at a much lower risk.

Expanding into new markets can be risky. One of the primary benefits of sales team outsourcing is that they are the qualified test specific markets quickly and efficiently. And if one of those markets fails, you haven’t invested (and wasted) a lot of money on opening up an international office and hiring staff before you’ve proven your international business model.

But when should you avoid sales team outsourcing?

When you’re simply not ready to expand your business globally. When you don’t have the money to invest a solid year of experimenting in new international markets. When you don’t know your own customer base well enough to have a sales strategy of where to go next. When your tech doesn’t meet international standards, whether server location or privacy laws, like GDPR in the E.U. When your tech isn’t even stable enough to guarantee uptime in timezones around the world. When you haven’t proven yourself in at least one local market or one reliable vertical.

But if you’re technologically, culturally, and financially ready to take your business to the next level internationally, you can’t beat an outsourced sales team. If you're thinking about expanding internationally, or just want to learn more about sales outsourcing, click below to request a consultation.